First things first: the light. Let’s get to the winner of The Blue Ribbon! Drum roll please…

Congratulations, Brittany D. Perkins!!! You havewon a beautiful, 10″ x 15″ print of The Blue Ribbon!. Your print will come on beautiful, shimmering, pearlized, archival paper and will be hand-signed. Please send an email to me at sarah@sarahallegra.com with your mailing address and I’ll get it to you!

What do you guys think? Was that fun? Something we should do again? Did the tweeting format work for you? Let me know your thoughts and I can fine-tune my contest process to make it better for everyone! Don’t forget that my fundraising will continue for the entire month of May, so stock up on your art purchases now while they’ll do the most good!

I think I was telling you guys about the evolution of this character. I’ve always had a thing for horns and antlers on people (see my very first self portrait as proof) and wanted to work them into DreamWorld from the beginning. As with most mythologies, I felt there was room for a Puckish, trickster character, which is what I had in mind when I started constructing this creature. The beginning of my work on him coincided with the beginning of True Detective, a pure coincidence, but True Detective’s ominous Yellow King bled into my concept, and before I knew it my trickster had transformed beyond a mere Puck or even Loki into the DreamWorld version of The King In Yellow.

DreamWorld is an ever-evolving place, and while this King is the first sinister character to be portrayed, there are other forces at work. We will meet them eventually. For now, I think it is enough to know that the King in Yellow has been sent into exile by DreamWorld’s true King for trying to usurp the throne and plunge DreamWorld into darkness. He has been foiled for now, and is thus known as they Exiled King, though some still whisper of the King in Yellow and restoring him to his rightful, dark glory along with those who seek the same goals… but I don’t worry. The King is strong and benevolent. And we haven’t even met the Queen yet, though we will soon. She also rules for good, and is not to be taken lightly.

Let the whispers and secrets travel where they will. The King in Yellow has been sent into exile as a merciful punishment, but I doubt a second grab for the throne would be met with such leniency.

Now that you know about the Exiled King, want to see how he came to life?

My initial inspiration for the antlers was the Makhor goat’s horns, such as seen in this stock image:

Horns are always tricky to build for human heads. Making them stable but light, keeping them balanced on the head while trying to appear that there’s no supporting structure at all… they’re always a nightmare to make. And I knew these ones were going to be the largest pair I’d made yet. As usual, I dove in without a real plan and figured it out as I went.

I started with a regular headband and some strong but light wire, wrapped around itself and twisted generously onto the headband. I began introducing the twisted shape by wrapping it around my arm a few times.

I wrapped a thin layer of newspaper over each wire frame, adding a layer of masking tape on top to help it hold its shape and smooth it.

Looking very lop-sided at the moment

I initially tried spraying the antlers with spray adhesive to try to help smooth the antlers further, but all it really did was make it tacky, even after it had dried. I sighed and decided I’d try and use it to my advantage by covering the antlers with a layer of metallic gold tissue paper (which smells really weird, by the way). I filled in some of the larger dips and gaps with hot glue and added a little more tissue paper, but I knew I’d end up having to do a little smoothing to them in post production. I don’t remember why now, but I ended up getting these finished just the evening before my morning shoot, so I didn’t have more time to tinker with them and make them absolutely perfect.

You can see here the careful support structure I created literally with toothpicks and popsicle sticks broken into smaller strips. Sometimes the most straight-forward way is the best way 🙂 They’re also reinforced with a little bit of monofilament line to help them not bow away from each other.

With the antlers done, I moved onto the leaf mantle. I used approximately a billion fake leaves for this which I’d collected over several years and a number of projects. I still found myself nearly running out by the end and had to ration them carefully. I concentrated on the leaves around the face first, which also conveniently covered the antler’s headband and support structures.

A full mantle of leaves

I’ve had this one vest in my “costume” supplies for a very long time and I just love it. It looks very rugged and home-spun and fits a very wide variety of looks and styles. I’m pretty sure it was made for someone closer to my size than Dan’s, so I quickly added extra length to it by cutting straight through the shoulder seem and building a new shoulder strap with leaves hot glued to each other. The yard provided a wealth of beautiful acorns to choose from and use as buttons. And don’t worry, the squirrels still had more to eat than they ever could.

Next was the big leaf amulet. I’d gotten this pack of huge, very realistic leaves probably two years ago and had been holding on to them, waiting for them to become useful. Now was their time! This heavy chain was also in my stash for similar reasons, and became a lovely chain for what would be a leaf amulet.

Some smaller, gold-dusted leaves, a large gold key and an amber-colored, leaf-shaped crystal finished it off.

Almost done!

Leaf slipper tops

The very last thing I made were “leaf slippers,” for lack of a better word. They were just several leaves glued together with elastic straps to help keep them on Dan’s feet; super easy!

Leaf slipper bottoms

I also cut up some strips of a golden-brown, rustic-looking cotton to tie around Dan’s sleeves and pant legs, but that would be assembled the day of. As far as my prep work went, I was done! I honestly can’t remember exactly how long the whole costume took to make… several days of solid work, no sleep? Eight weeks? I have no idea, but it was long. When I’m deeply involved in a project like this, time melts away for any practical use.

Before I get more into this, let me back up and tell you about Dan Donohue, who so beautifully brought my character to life. Dan is celebrated actor, best known for his extensive theater work. He played Scar in Disney’s Broadway version of The Lion King and left for Oregon almost immediately after our shoot to go play Henry the III at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s version of Henry the III, as well as the father in their production of A Wrinkle In Time. You would never believe from meeting him that he does evil and sinister so well; he is truly one of the kindest, most enthusiastic and genuinely lovely people I’ve had the pleasure of working with. But the moment I told him to be a villain, it all fell away and for a second I had to catch my breath because he so completely embodied The King In Yellow. Dan is a muse if I’ve ever met one and a pure delight to work with! He’s also very creative and funny, as I’ll get into more later.

The morning of the shoot came quickly, Dan and I found our location and the entire shoot was easy and felt effortless. There may have been a bit more effort on Dan’s part trying to keep his antlers and mantle from toppling over if he moved his head too far in any direction, but it seemed that his theater experience really paid off and helped him manage this probably cumbersome bit of costume beautifully.

Antler wrangling

Generally when I shoot new DreamWorld characters, I edit one or two images; maybe three if I feel they’re all really compelling, but in this instance I edited five. This is almost unprecedented. The only other time I’ve edited more photos from a single concept, with no costume or location changes was for the Katie’s World set. That says quite a lot about how perfectly Dan was able to become the Exiled King. But enough talking about them. You want to see the images, right?

You’ve seen this first one already since I used it to tease the series, but I’m posting it again so the whole set can be seen together as intended. To set the mood, here are the two quotes which most directly influenced how I took the set, one from Robert W. Chamber’s book The King In Yellow and one from True Detective.

“Him who eats time. Him robes; it’s a wind of invisible voices. Rejoice, death is not the end! Rejoice, death is not the end! Rejoice, Carcosa!”
– Miss Delores, True Detective episode 7, After You’ve Gone

The Shadows Lengthen

The Shadows Lengthen – detail

The Shadows Lengthen – detail. Dan’s hand here kills me every time, it’s SO PERFECT. I never knew a single hand could be so expressive, yet it is.

Pliable Reality – shot using a home-made “Lensbaby” which was the top of a water bottle

Pliable Reality – detail

Pliable Reality – detail

Pliable Reality – detail

Where Black Stars Rise

Where Black Stars Rise – detail

Where Black Stars Rise – detail

Where Black Stars Rise – detail

The Tatters Of The King

The Tatters Of The King – detail

The Tatters Of The King – detail

And perhaps my favorite of them all….

His Robe Is A Wind of Invisible Voices

His Robe Is A Wind of Invisible Voices – detail

His Robe Is A Wind of Invisible Voices – detail

His Robe Is A Wind of Invisible Voices – detail

His Robe Is A Wind of Invisible Voices – detail

Whew, still with me? I know that was a long post, but I had a lot of photos to cover!

He’s not REALLY evil, he just pretends really well!

The only sad thing is that we never got to see how well Dan managed his leaf slippers, but trust me, he killed it like everything else.

Thank you so much to Dan for being the perfect King in Yellow and furthermore being extremely patient as I slowly edited all of these!! Hopefully we won’t have to wait too long to see the Exiled King’s companions and cohorts! Dan has been invited back again whenever he returns to California, so he may pop up in more photos; I hope so 🙂

Ok, guys! You have one more day to enter the print giveaway and win your own FREE, archival, shimmery, pearlized print of The Blue Ribbon, so get those entries in! Entering couldn’t be easier. Simply tweet one of the ME facts below, making SURE to use the hashtags, and you’re in! That’s it!

The Blue Ribbon, model: Katie Johnson – enter the giveaway to win a print of this image!

Tweeting multiple statements will count as extra entries, so enter as many times as you like. However, tweeting the same statement multiple times will not count. And that will probably just annoy the people reading your feed, so don’t do it. 😉

I will choose a random winner from all entries on May 20th and announce the winner here! Stay tuned!

***Want to win a free print of my latest image, The Blue Ribbon? Read on to find out how you can enter!!***

ME Awareness Week continues! Catch up on the story with the first,second and third posts!

Spoon Theory – a self portrait

For anyone not convinced of the seriousness of ME, let me present you with a quote from Dr. Nancy G. Klimas in a Q & A article from The New York Times on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Dr. Klimas serves on the board of directors for The International Association for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and treats both CFS patients as well as patients with HIV and AIDS. In 2009, she made a comment comparing CFS to HIV and AIDS. A reader expressed anger over her comment, calling it alarmist and saying it was making CFS sound like a much more deadly disease than it is. Dr. Kilmas had this to say [emphasis mine]:

“…But I hope you are not saying that C.F.S. patients are not as ill as H.I.V. patients. My H.I.V. patients for the most part are hale and hearty thanks to three decades of intense and excellent research and billions of dollars invested. Many of my C.F.S. patients, on the other hand, are terribly ill and unable to work or participate in the care of their families.

I split my clinical time between the two illnesses, and I can tell you if I had to choose between the two illnesses (in 2009) I would rather have H.I.V. But C.F.S., which impacts a million people in the United States alone, has had a small fraction of the research dollars directed towards it.”

In Between Awake And Asleep – a self portrait

This is the point in my explanations where I like to remind people (and myself) that I am lucky; I am on the mild-to-moderate end of the ME illness spectrum. It can get much, much worse. There are thousands of people afflicted with severe ME, on constant morphine drips, in agonizing pain, earplugs in every second of the day, unable to tolerate the slightest light or sound, unable to feed or dress themselves or even use the bathroom on their own. People die from ME. That is why it is so very, very dangerous when the medical community trivializes our disease, insists it’s psychosomatic, insists there’s nothing physically wrong with us. YES. Yes, there is, doctors. Those who have died from ME, and there are many, many examples, frequently show the same inflamed areas in the brain when autopsied. While I’m not sure I’m ready to say ME is purely a neurological disease, it sure seems to be a big piece of the puzzle.

When the medical community has nothing to offer you, you become your own doctor, your own detective and your own science experiment. You try anything and everything that might help; medications, physical therapy, diet changes, supplements, “Eastern” medicine, energy healing, modifying your sleep habits, psychotherapy; anything. One year when I was still able to work a part-time job, I spent over a quarter of my pitiful earnings on doctor copays, medications, supplements and treatments. That amount hasn’t changed much since then.

While there have been some setbacks recently for the ME community, there has also been forward momentum. I know of at least two ME documentaries currently in production. I had the chance to work with one of the films, Canary In A Coal Mine, and get involved with when it was raising funds through Kickstarter by donating the printing rights to some of my ME-themed images for them to use as backer rewards. Everyone was shocked and delighted when the Canary film more than quadrupled its initial goal in its 30-day campaign! I take this overwhelming support as a sign that our voices are finally starting to be heard, and that, perhaps, this indicates the winds are finally starting to change.

The Fragile Blossom That Opens In The Snow – a self portrait. “Courage is not the towering oak that sees storms come and go; it is the fragile blossom that opens in the snow.”– Alice M. Swaim

I never write posts about subjects like this with the intent to garner pity or complain. That is never my intention. What I want is to bring awareness to this extremely misunderstood, unappreciated and devastating disease by speaking frankly and candidly about it. We are suffering and dying and there are few people who know about it and even fewer who are doing anything about it. The squeaky wheel does get the oil. Enough noise needs to be made and enough public outrage needs to be expressed over how the medical community (as a group; there are certainly exceptions and wonderful doctors working alongside us) is ignoring us and indeed doing harm.

It can feel daunting to attack such a huge, glass mountain. It does not matter that you are only one person and that I am only one person. Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King Jr. were each just one person.

I genuinely believe this is a problem science could solve if enough effort was made to solve it. At the very, very least we could find treatments to alleviate the symptoms. We have tackled other serious diseases. But we need the funds and we need the public to demand action. And we need a name that isn’t dismissive and demeaning. So this last part goes to the CDC:

Also, in honor of this day of raising awareness, I’m holding a contest to win a beautiful, 10″ x 15″, museum-quality print of my latest image, The Blue Ribbon; an underwater representation of the struggle that living with ME can be. Your print will come on beautiful, shimmering, pearlized, archival paper. And all you have to do is tweet!

The Blue Ribbon, model: Katie Johnson – enter the giveaway to win a print of this image!

Tweeting multiple statements will count as extra entries, so enter as many times as you like. However, tweeting the same statement multiple times will not count. And that will probably just annoy the people reading your feed, so don’t do it. 😉 I will choose a random winner from all entries on May 20th and announce the winner here!

Thank you to everyone for reading and participating! If you have had your own experiences with ME, CFS, fibro or any other chronic illness and you’d like to share your story, please leave it in a comment!

***Want to win a free print of my latest image, The Blue Ribbon? Read on to find out how you can enter!!***

As ME Awareness Week continues, I feel it’s time to share my personal history with this disease. Catch up on the story with the first and second posts!

Most of you will have heard my own story about ME. To briefly recap for anyone new to the blog, on May 27th 2008, I came down with what I thought was food poisoning. It wasn’t fun, but I thought it would surely pass quickly. It did not. Everything got worse. Looking bad, I can see signs of ME showing up as early as my teens, but it was May 27th when it really exploded.

I have not been the same since; I have not had a pain-free day in all that time. I had three brief, beautiful days at the beginning of 2011. I was on steroids for an infected cat bite and for those three days, I wasn’t constantly dragged down by the muddy, boggy, wet-wool, bone-deep exhaustion of ME, which I commemorated with a self portrait. Outside of that, there has been no relief.

3 Good Days – a self portrait

Though there is much controversy over the subject, and I make no claims to be any kind of expert (except about my own experiences) I believe that ME, CFS and fibro are really all the same thing. Or, at the very least, they’re all branches of a “mother disease” which we have yet to identify. Either way, they all seem intrinsically connected. However, the United State’s intentionally wishy-washy definitions of CFS and fibro have led me to setting their names aside and using ME as much as possible.

ME has excellent, testable, finite guideline, though getting your doctor to agree to those tests is another matter. ME has the most scientifically sound definition, and it’s the one I connect with most of all, since it is so specific. However, since almost no one in the United States has heard of ME, including all of my doctors, I tend to use the names interchangeably depending on whom I’m talking to, to make it easiest for them to understand.

The hallmarks of ME include unreasonable fatigue that is disproportionate to how much you’ve exerted yourself. For instance, I might go to the grocery store and come home feeling like a healthy person would after running a marathon. You experience post-exertional malaise, typically worst 24 to 48 hours after said exertion. Muscle pain is key. Headaches and migraines common. Neurological symptoms begin, often in the form of tripping, falling, sudden “brain fog” where it seems like your brain has turned into oatmeal, the inability to remember words, or even your own name. Light, sound, scent, noise and touch are all heavily amplified; it’s like the volume in our brains in constantly set to 11. Every now and then this proves useful, like when I could smell the very faint gas leak at my neighbor’s house that no one else could. Usually it just means there are more things to avoid which would trigger pain and migraines. My husband Geoff and I joke that I can smell things only dogs and I can detect, but there’s a truth behind the laughter.

The Fog Rolls In – a self portrait about “brain fog”

And, ah yes, pain. Pain blends into your existence like spilled ink, no matter how you try to resist. The areas of pain vary from patient to patient, and even from day to day for each patient. I have a mystery flank pain with no identifiable cause for which I receive nerve-blocking injections a few times a year, including the latest round just this morning. The recovery period from them is usually brutal, but it’s better than not being able to have it done. If I clean the toilet too vigorously, my arm and shoulder might ache for a month. Sometimes longer. I am also extremely susceptible to every bug that comes around; I cannot get through a cold and flu season unscathed.

There is currently no cure for ME, nor many good ways to even manage the symptoms. Nor is there a clear idea of what the cause is. There are good arguments to be made for it having a neurological cause, or it could be an auto-immune disease, something viral, something bacterial, something sent by the gods to people who were very naughty as children in previous lives… it’s all up for debate.

Unjust – model: Aly Darling

Back to my image, The Blue Ribbon. It’s the latest in my photographic series called Enchanted Sleep, which visually portrays what living with ME is like.

Most illnesses and many causes have their own color ribbons these days; pink for breast cancer, fibro is purple, red for AIDS, etc. (And yes, certain colors are shared by numerous diseases and causes; purple is also used for lupus and Alzheimer’s along with quite a few others.) ME’s ribbon is blue. I photographed this image several months ago during an underwater shoot with Katie. It took me longer to get to editing it than I had planned, and by the time it was done, it was so close to May 12th, I decided to just wait to release it now.

Katie is my honorary ME-er; she’s quite the opposite of someone with ME, being full of energy and vitality all the time. But she’s been around me and other friends who do have similar illnesses that she seems to understand our struggle as much as anyone could. I have great trust in her modeling instincts, so when we shot this, I gave her a long strip of blue ribbon and just told her to do something with it. What she came up with so clearly encapsulated the physical fight you’re forced to be in every day, I knew it was the perfect visual metaphor. Thank you, Katie, for taking on our cause and helping me portray it in my images!!

Also, in honor of this day of raising awareness, I’m holding a contest to win a beautiful, 10″ x 15″, museum-quality print of my latest image, The Blue Ribbon; an underwater representation of the struggle that living with ME can be. Your print will come on beautiful, shimmering, pearlized, archival paper. And all you have to do is tweet!

The Blue Ribbon, model: Katie Johnson – enter the giveaway to win a print of this image!

Tweeting multiple statements will count as extra entries, so enter as many times as you like. However, tweeting the same statement multiple times will not count. And that will probably just annoy the people reading your feed, so don’t do it. 😉 I will choose a random winner from all entries on May 20th and announce the winner here!

Thank you to everyone for reading and participating! If you have had your own experiences with ME, CFS, fibro or any other chronic illness and you’d like to share your story, please leave it in a comment!

Nobody is willing to wrap their tongue around anything that requires 11 syllables. But that is not why Steven Straus at the NIH decided to “rebrand” myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) as “chronic fatigue syndrome” in 1987. He wasn’t verbally lazy. He was nefarious.

…To understand why the department of Health and Human Services (HHS) decided to bury this illness with a silly name, we have to go back to 1934, to the Los Angeles County Hospital. In that year, a polio epidemic was raging through California, claiming hundreds of lives. In 1934, 198 staff members at the LA County Hospital were struck. But they did not develop paralysis, nor did they die. They suffered from a range of symptoms that included weakness, easy fatigability, exercise intolerance, and photophobia, all of which suggested a neurological disease – like polio. But their symptoms did not resolve over time.

It was not polio. The physician who reported this mysterious epidemic, Dr. Alexander Gilliam, called it “atypical polio.” Eventually, two of the doctors who had fallen ill sued. They each won two million dollars – an enormous amount of money in those days.

As the epidemic of “atypical polio” spread around the Northern Hemisphere, increasing numbers of people were struck. In 1955, there was an epidemic in Royal Free Hospital in London. Like the LA epidemic, there was a high attack rate among hospital personnel. The investigating physician, Dr. Melvin Ramsay, called it “myalgic encephalomyelitis,” meaning pain accompanied by inflammation in the brain and spinal column. He noted that the symptoms of ME exactly replicated those of the LA County Hospital outbreak.

Since then, there have been over 60 outbreaks of ME, but the one that drew media attention in the US was the Incline Village outbreak in 1984. Two doctors, Dr. Dan Peterson and Dr. Paul Cheney, began seeing patients with a peculiar illness. The illness caused easy fatigability, weakness, pain, sleep disorder, and a spate of neurological symptoms. It got worse with exercise. Over that summer, hundreds of people were struck. The doctors were sure that it was an epidemic, and that it was caused by a pathogen affecting the central nervous system. They called the CDC.

The CDC showed up eventually, but they refused to examine any of the patients. Steven Straus called it a disease of “depressed menopausal women.” HHS made this characterization known to the press, which then dubbed the disease “yuppie flu.”

Once it was sufficiently discredited, “CFS” could be safely shoved under the rug for three decades.

Since the 1984 Incline Village outbreak, over one million people in the US have contracted the disease. Between 17 and 20 million people have ME worldwide. The economic losses are staggering – $17-23 billion dollars annually in the US alone.

But over most of the past 30 years NIH has spent nothing on research for the disease. This year it reserved $5 million, or less than $5 per person. In contrast, the NIH is spending more than $2.7 billion on AIDS, which has a comparable prevalence.

This paucity of expenditure has slowed serious scientific research. In addition, because there is no money for research, researchers and clinicians at academic institutions are discouraged from studying the disease. Doctors in major hospitals are told not to treat it, because insurance companies won’t pay for an illness that has “no cause and no cure.” And peer-reviewed journals will not publish research papers on the illness.

In short, the illness has been blacklisted. And the reason is not simply because HHS is incompetent, or because it feared yet another AIDS-like epidemic – although those things influenced its decision to do nothing. The reason HHS has spent thirty years in denial stems from those two doctors who received $4 million after the 1934 LA County outbreak. From that point on, this illness has been on the radar of insurance companies.

It would be a mistake to think that HHS operates without input from the insurance industry. And it would be a mistake to believe that the insurance industry – which has spent 30 years refusing to cover patients with the illness, and has hired physicians to dismiss the disease as “all in your head” – is not panicked by Obamacare. With over a million sick with ME, and a quarter of those unable to get out of bed, they stand to lose billions.

*****

Breakable – a self portrait

Yes, a bureaucratic trick of the insurance industry changed our name and helped keep the world ignorant to our illness. This makes me so angry I could cry. The sheer cruelty of it is astonishing, even for insurance companies. Intentionally denying care, intentionally denying the existence of the disease at all; it’s unforgivable. But we sick will NOT be forgotten.

The vast majority of the world has never even heard of ME, let alone experienced it, on their own or through others. That ignorance is absolutely deadly to us all. If the public does not demand, loudly, persistently, that change MUST happen, it never will. And that cannot be allowed. The stakes are far too high.

Also, in honor of this day of raising awareness, I’m holding a contest to win a beautiful, 10″ x 15″, museum-quality print of my latest image, The Blue Ribbon; an underwater representation of the struggle that living with ME can be. Your print will come on beautiful, shimmering, pearlized, archival paper. And all you have to do is tweet!

The Blue Ribbon, model: Katie Johnson – enter the giveaway to win a print of this image!

Tweeting multiple statements will count as extra entries, so enter as many times as you like. However, tweeting the same statement multiple times will not count. And that will probably just annoy the people reading your feed, so don’t do it. 😉 I will choose a random winner from all entries on May 20th and announce the winner here!

Thank you to everyone for reading and participating! If you have had your own experiences with ME, CFS, fibro or any other chronic illness and you’d like to share your story, please leave it in a comment!

“I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

Vanity’s Murder, a self portrait

May 12th is called “Invisible Illness Day.”

You probably don’t know that…and that’s part of the problem.

Years ago, May 12th was chosen to be the international awareness day for chronic immunological and neurological diseases, which include everything from Gulf War Syndrome and Multiple Chemical Sensitivities to fibromyalgia (fibro), Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) and myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME). Yet more money is spent each year trying to cure male pattern baldness than these diseases.

I’m all for a luxurious head of hair. But, diseases like ME are taking lives.

A Fading Girl – model: Brooke Shaden

To be sure, “Invisible Illness Day” rolls off the tongue much more easily than “Myalgic Encephalomyelitis Day.” But the name highlights one of the sources of great frustration for most of us — we often do not APPEAR outwardly sick, thus many people refuse to believe our illness is real.

Unfortunately, some of those “many people” include doctors, policy makers and insurance companies.

How do we fight an illness with no end, no cure, no treatment, no recognition? How many people must die before the world pays attention? How many sufferers must commit suicide from the hopelessness and misery they’re dragged through every day before change comes? We fight it by bringing awareness of the problem, one person at a time. Every tweet, Facebook post, blog entry, text and conversation you and I have about ME helps fight it. Every petition we sign, documentary we watch and donation we give is a punch in ME’s face. And here’s the latest way I’m balling up my tiny little fists.

Also, in honor of this day of raising awareness, I’m holding a contest to win a beautiful, 10″ x 15″, museum-quality print of my latest image, The Blue Ribbon; an underwater representation of the struggle that living with ME can be. Your print will come on beautiful, shimmering, pearlized, archival paper. And all you have to do is tweet!

The Blue Ribbon, model: Katie Johnson – enter the giveaway to win a print of this image!

Tweeting multiple statements will count as extra entries, so enter as many times as you like. However, tweeting the same statement multiple times will not count. And that will probably just annoy the people reading your feed, so don’t do it. 😉 I will choose a random winner from all entries on May 20th and announce the winner here!

Poor, patient Katie shot this same concept with me three times, spanning almost a solid year from the first take to the last one. I assured her each time we reshot it that the problem was not her, because it honestly wasn’t. This was a case of me having a very clear vision in my head of how the image should look, but not taking the time to inspect it closely enough. Each of the other two tries at this shoot came close, but there was always something just enough wrong with it that I knew I needed to reshoot it to be truly happy with the final images.

Flora Awakens

Here they finally are! Flora is a DreamWorld character I’ve had in my head for a long time; an obvious statement given how many times I’ve tried to capture her visually, but much longer considering all the time I spent conceptualizing her and building her elaborate costume.

Flora was a nature spirit to me, the bringer of spring, renewal and life. I strongly pictured that wherever she walked, flowers would grow in her footsteps. I thought this was quite original until I remembered…

When I was young, I watched (over and over and over) an animated version of The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe, which remains my favorite film version of the novel to this day (it’s the only version which, in my opinion, gives Aslan a truly “golden” voice as CS Lewis describes it, for one thing). In this take on the story, when Aslan is resurrected and romps with Lucy and Susan, flowers spring up wherever he steps, leaving a trail of paw-shaped floral clusters.

Ok, so the idea wasn’t exactly mine. But at least I realized where I’d gotten the idea before I started calling it completely my own!

I started with a beautifully embroidered corset top at a local second-hand store. I spent a while deciding if I would keep it as part of my personal wardrobe or use it for this costume, and the costume obviously won. I decided I had enough pretty things that I don’t wear often enough as is, and it really added a lovely depth to the costume with its subtle ornateness. The other base piece of clothing was a lovely, fluffy aqua-colored skirt made from layers of the lightest, softest netting. This was another thing I had to seriously debate weather to sacrifice to the costume gods, but in the end, I decided I could always buy another one for myself.

Over the aqua skirt, I added an airy overskirt of ivory tulle, lifting it in two spots at the front with a small spray of flowers to hold it in place. I added a layer of tulle around the top of the bodice as well to give flowers more to hold on to and also give it a dropped shoulder.

Creating is usually a messy process.

Next step, as it so often is, was to cover it with flowers! My handy hot glue gun proved its worth again. I tried to pick flowers which enhanced the shape I was creating in the clothing. The wisteria dripping down from the shoulders seemed so perfect to me!

Once I had the front looking pretty much like how I’d pictured it, I started working on the most exciting part; the train!

This dress’ train started at the top of the back and went all the way down to the bottom of the skirt; a very old-fashioned and somewhat unusual style of train. Since I knew I was going to have use my flowers carefully and wisely to make them cover everything I wanted them to, I hemmed and hawed over this part a lot; pinning flowers in place, moving them around, flipping this one and that one… Eventually I just had to start gluing flowers in place and trust that I would figure it out as I went.

The almost-finished train!

After I was satisfied with the dress, I started working on the flower footprints.

Fabric feet

I traced the shape of my feet onto paper and then cut four pairs of feet out of some nice dark green material I had leftover from another project. Again, the next step was to cover with flowers!

This gave me a total of eight feet. I would have liked to have done a few more, but I was running out of flowers, so I had to make due.

Beware of hot glue drippings. I still have a faint scar from where this guy landed a year ago.

Apparently I didn’t take any making-of photos of the flower pieces for Katie’s face, hair and hands, which is too bad. For the pieces in her hair, on her eyebrows and ears, I cut rough shapes from a thin sheet of plastic; I knew the glue would melt the plastic where it came in direct contact, but it would provide just enough of a frame to make my life easier. They were very free-form creations, which I put together on my foam head to make sure the proportions were at least somewhat reasonable. I had planned on cutting them slightly to fit Katie’s face when the shooting day came, but they ended up fitting her beautifully! The pieces in her hair were held on with bobby pins and the ones of her face stayed on with a little help from garment tape.

Katie being adorable and showing off her new prosthetics.

Her “hand flowers,” as I was calling them, were meant to show life just springing off her, literally dripping from her fingers. These were only constructed the day before the third shoot, and I loved what they added to the images, so perhaps it’s lucky that the first two takes didn’t turn out 🙂 These were very, very easy to make. I tied a loop of clear, stretchy cord to slide over Katie’s palms. From each of these loops I tied three lengths of monofilament thread and randomly glued little petals and blossoms to them so it looked like they were falling.

At this point Katie and I shot the concept… then we reshot it… and then we finally shot it for a third time, which was the one that stuck. It goes to show, if something doesn’t go right the first time, just try and use it as a learning experience! With Katie, we always have a fun time, no matter what we shoot, so when concepts aren’t perfect right away, I haven’t wasted anything. I had a good time with my friend, and I hopefully learned something about how I don’t want my final image to look!

With that said, allow me to show you the finished trio of images, with detail shots beneath each of them!

Spring’s Awakening – detail

Spring’s Awakening – detail

Spring’s Awakening – detail

Spring’s Awakening – detail

Spring’s Awakening – detail

Spring’s Awakening – detail

Joy Of Renewal

Joy Of Renewal – detail

Joy Of Renewal – detail

Life Eternal

Life Eternal – detail

Life Eternal – detail

And here’s a few more detail shots to cover all my bases!

Flora shoot details

Flora shoot details

Flora shoot details

Flora shoot details

Flora Shoot detail

If you have a favorite of the three, I’d love to hear your opinion!

Lastly, before I go, I’d like to mention the lovely interview I did with the well-respected photography site PhotoFocus! I was very honored to be their Photographer Of The Week 🙂

Thank you, PhotoFocus!! And thank you to all my readers and supporters! And an extra big, special thank you to Katie Johnson for being so patient and willing to keep redoing this one concept with me and knocking it out of the park every time!